


my right-hand man

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amnesia, Canon Divergence - Voltron: Legendary Defender, Character Death, Character Study, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Not Your Happy Ending, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 03:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7492341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Always, always, Shiro found himself plagued by the sensation that he had forgotten— something. <em>Something</em>.</p>
<p>How cruel it was, to know that you do not know.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>In which Shiro remembers too late, Keith never forgets in the first place, and a promise is kept at the very last moment, when it barely even matters anymore.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> when sheith became my voltron otp, was my first inclination to write a long, hardcore angst fic? the answer is yes, yes it was. this is all pretty much self-indulgent headcanons in flashback format. i don't expect much to hold up come season 2, but this was made purely for enjoyment purposes (if you enjoy pain, that is. hahaha).
> 
> truly, this fic has been a labor of love. it fought me the whole way through.
> 
> i apologize for any small mistakes/inconsistencies you might spot (especially concerning constellations and quintessence. can cassiopeia be seen from the desert? can quintessence explode? for the sake of my sanity, let's just go with yes. please).
> 
> i hope you enjoy!

> You're going to die  
>  in your best friend's arms.
> 
> And you play along because it's funny, because it's written down,  
>  you've memorized it, it's all you know. [...]
> 
> Imagine:  
>  Someone's pulling a gun, and you're jumping into the middle of it.  
>  You didn't think you'd feel this way.
> 
>       - Richard Siken, " _Planet of Love_ "

No one had ever told Keith that love would hurt. No one had ever told Keith that love would turn him inside-out. That love would flay his flesh apart to reveal the tenderness, the soft red wet that is the body made vulnerable, made unmade.

No one had ever told Keith that love would kill him, and that he would be glad for it, eager to leap upon the blade.

There were so many things in the universe. Beautiful things. Frightening things. Living things. Dead things. Purely conceptual things. Things with no name. Things with no one to remember that they had happened, that they had existed. Things with no one to know that for just a blink, a mere blip in time, existence had been theirs and improbably, magnificently, they had _been_.

So many things, both told and untold.

Within Keith, there existed a whole little world of the untold.

Secrets that had not been secrets, once. Memories that had been cherished, not forgotten, once. A love that would not stifle its voice, its desire to sing itself straight out of his body and over to Shiro, no matter how ferociously, futilely, Keith tried to choke it– and his heart– back down his throat and into the cavity of his chest.

An entire relationship, kept untold. An entire love held prisoner in a locked box, hidden away in Keith's closet where all his skeletons slept.

It was too late. No one had ever told Keith that it would be too late. Too late for him, and for Shiro, and for everyone else.

No. _No_. It was just too late for Keith.

It wasn't too late to save his friends. It wasn't too late to speak up, either.

It wasn't too late to press that key into Shiro's hand. It wasn't too late to tell the untold. If Keith was going to die, then he wanted Shiro to open him up _again_ , to see him _again_.

'Here I am, unlocked.  
Here I am. Know me.  
Tell my story. Tell _**our**_ story.'

* * *

The line between consciousness and dream was a thin and biting thing. Shiro walked that line. A line that was actually a knife's edge, slender and sharp; a line that was actually a mountain path, dusty rock-red and heaven-scraping, carrying him higher and higher, away and away.

Reality cut into his heels. Dreams scattered stars and silk throughout his skull, numbing the sting and the ache and all that he was, really. All that he was. 

_Leader, Paladin, man_. All of himself, gone numb.

He pitched forth into the embrace of neither side. No, no, he could not allow himself to fall unconscious, he had to _fight_. But he couldn't force the dull, sleepy haze out of his head, either. 

So there he was, stranded. Existing half in one world and half in another. Limp, and helpless, and spinning fitfully in watercolor thoughts. It was all he could do, all that he could manage to be. He grasped tightly, white-knuckled, to that line. That shimmering, splintering line where unconsciousness nipped away at consciousness with bright white teeth.

__

_A flash of teeth through grinning lips_

_Keith_

Reality was the wail of emergency sirens, muffled as if he were suspended deep underwater. Reality was the slippery ferrous taste that coated his mouth and lips. 

Dream was a lifetime flashing past, blink blink blink, beneath fluttering eyelids. Dream was a lifetime held cupped in both hands, smaller than he had realized because he was young, they were all so young, but it was still good nonetheless. A short life, but still worthwhile.

_Keith_

_  
_

  
_Keith Keith Keith_

Dream was a smile in the shape of Keith's mouth. Dream was a past, _his_ past, with more Keith in it than he'd remembered. 

Ah. There it was again, a sensation so familiar he could shake hands with it and call it a friend. But it was no friend of his, and it never would be. Shiro slept with it in his bed at night, where it pawed at his back with needy fingers and nestled, prickly-sharp, into the meat of his frontal lobe. 

Always, always, Shiro found himself plagued by the sensation that he had forgotten– something. _Something_. 

How cruel it was, to know that you do not know. 

Shiro had forgotten something. Something important. Somethings? Perhaps many things. 

Something important. Something restless. Something that wanted itself to be known. Something that wanted to be made real.

If there was no witness to a phenomenon, had it ever even happened? Had it happened with consequence? Had it happened and _mattered_? 

Whatever it was that Shiro had forgotten, it wanted so fiercely to matter. To be important once more. To crack open his pulsing, throbbing heart and say ‘ _Here I am, I belong here, I am a piece of yourself that the Druids stole away but you have it back now, Shiro, you have me back now_.' 

The sensation of something forgotten shot through the fluid of Shiro's eyes and pierced, frozen-hot, into his brain. Needling, needling. It needled away at him. Pressing, prodding. It was a whisper at the back of his mind, where everything was cool and black and difficult to see; it was a face, marred by ripples but unforgettably known, staring up at him from beneath the surface of clear blue water. 

But his mind was a landscape of ruin. 

He plunged his fists, one of flesh and one of steel, into that sky-colored water, and the forgotten somethings dissipated between his searching fingers like mist. Like silver fishes, dissolving themselves back down into paint.

His memory was no longer something he could call his own.

_No_

_  
_

__

_No No No No No_

" ** _No_** ," he said. He said it within a dream, within the confines of his fogged-glass mind. He said it aloud, too; breathless, and desperate, and choked out through clenched teeth. The word was a command. It was an order, a shout. It was in control. It was also a plea. Something small. Something desperate. 

The world stopped whirling past in streaks of red and blue. Shiro opened his eyes. Blinked away the blood that stung them. He sunk back down into his seat, no longer suspended mid-air in spin-cycle, like a coin clang-clang-clanging around the inside of a washing machine. The straps that had been holding him secure, gouging into his ribcage and pinching his lungs shut, slackened. Oxygen returned, wiping the condensation from the glass surface of his thoughts. His head was almost-clear, then lucid. 

He plunged himself into consciousness with one hungry breath. And then another. And then suddenly, all at once, Shiro remembered exactly what was happening. What had just happened. 

He saw what Keith was thinking. As Voltron, all five of their minds were knitted into one uniform body, like zipped-together fingers. A telepathic handshake. Through this link, Shiro _saw_. 

"No! No, Keith, I won't allow it!" he said, and this time ‘no’ wasn't just an order. ‘No’ was also a bark of fear, of fury. It was a snarl of emotion lodged tightly in the back of Shiro's throat. He slid a hand beneath his helmet's visor and swiped furiously at the wound that stretched along his hairline, oozing blood down into his eyes. His fingers came away stained and sticky, but they returned to the controls nonetheless and pulled, pulled hard, until Voltron was no longer spinning violently in space.

"Keith, are you out of your damn mind? There's –– there's just _gotta_ be some other way! Right, Pidge?––Shiro?" This was Lance, his mouthpiece sparking with static. 

Lance wasn't okay. His voice, like Shiro's, was brittle with panic. Apply enough pressure and it would shatter into something sharp, something desperate.

Here they were, at the final fight. Here they were, losing. Dying.

It wasn't supposed to end this way. 

Shiro couldn't think. He couldn't _fucking_ think. Keith's plan was flashing past at the forefront of his mind, terrible and selfless, selflessly terrible. The screaming of the emergency sirens matched the screaming within his own body and _why_ wouldn't the needling at the back of his brain go away? _Why_ was he such a failure of a leader when it came down to– to _this_ , the exact moment his team needed him to pull them through, to fix everything, to win? 

He slammed his fist down against his dashboard right when Keith said "Shiro, it's alright", as if everything _was_ alright. But it wasn't. It really wasn't. 

"What happened to doing this as Voltron? We're a team, okay! A _team_! We started as a team, and we'll go down as a team!" shouted Hunk, who was still as sturdy as an oak despite the tears collecting in the corners of his eyes. The Yellow Lion had sustained incredible damage to its armor. Shiro felt the injury as a weight, an aching deadness within his own leg. One more direct hit and the Yellow Lion would surely be knocked offline. 

"Shut up and just –– just _listen_ to me! It's –– it's okay, you guys, it really is okay. I want to do this. I'm the only one who can."

Shiro was spinning again. Shiro was suffocating again. Only he wasn't. Not really. The world streaked by in shades of red and blue and it was all in his head this time, all in his head, because he was helpless to stop Fate and he knew it. He knew it. There was no stopping something preordained, something penned down upon parchment in the gods' golden ink. Their lives were a tragedy enacted upon a grand, galactic stage. Welcome to the final scene, the final downfall, where he was going to watch his best friend die and he couldn't do a damn thing about it. 

Shiro was helpless to halt the unweaving of their minds' held hands. It was too late; they were all knocked out of sync because Keith kept pulling, pulling himself away from them. Voltron's disassembly was a visceral action. Too soon, too quickly, they had all separated into their own lions, and Shiro was sent reeling. As it always did, the suddenness of being alone– with only his own eyes, his own limbs– staggered Shiro. Unsettled him. 

The Black Lion stared the Red Lion in the face. 

"Stop. That's an order, Keith! We do this together. We die _together_ ," he said. He could see Keith through the Red Lion's display. So close, and yet so far. 

"Shiro, _we_ can do this!" Keith's 'we' did not include Shiro. It did not include the rest of the team. " _ **I**_ can do this!"

Shiro knew that Keith spoke the truth. The worst kind of truth. Keith _could_ do it. The Red Lion was the only ship capable of maneuvering close enough to Zarkon's main warship for the detonation to take out the entire Galran fleet.

Keith, and only Keith, could do it.

Pidge was screaming. Crying. Perhaps both, all at once. Her panic at the appearance of more incoming Galra battleship flooded the intercom, pounding within Shiro's eardrums to the beat of his own roaring pulse, but he couldn't quite manage to hear her fully. It was all too much. Too loud. Too fast.

_A dream. A dream in the shape of Keith's mouth._

Lance was saying something again. No, not saying– he was pleading, now. "Do something, do something, someone _do something!_ ". Shiro's eyes widened as they drank in the sight of Keith through the display, their lions floating nose to nose. So close, and yet so far.

Shiro found himself pressing a palm to the glass of his lion's display, as if he could reach out and touch Keith, frightened flesh upon frightened flesh. He wanted to feel Keith. To make it all okay. Truly okay. But he could do nothing, now. Keith mirrored the action, a hand coming to rest upon the glass with splayed fingers.

The sensation of forgetfulness became an unbearable presence within Shiro's skull.

"Sir, please. Please. Only one of us has to stay behind, and I'm the Paladin who can do what needs to be done. **Me**."

__

_No. Not you. I don't understand you. I don't understand why I need you._

"Goddammit, Shiro! For once in your life, be selfish! Just let me do this!"

"Y –– Yes. You –– you can do it, Keith. I believe in you," he breathed. The needles pressed, pressed, _pressed_ into the aching matter of his brain. Stinging, searching. Yearning. He had forgotten something important. Many important somethings. _A dream in the shape of Keith's mouth_. He wanted to shut his eyes. To hide behind the darkness, the calm and quiet safety that were closed lids. To be selfish for once. To pretend that this all wasn't happening. He did not close his eyes, of course. The tears came, beading together as they flowed down his cheeks, hot and fast, but Shiro kept his eyes open. If Keith was going to sacrifice himself, then Shiro would stay and bear witness. He would watch. He would remember. He would stay with Keith until the very end.

Keith wasn't smiling. Keith was crying, just as he was. Shiro could see it, they were so close. Close, and yet so far.

"You promised," said Keith.

_Here I am, I belong here, I am a piece of yourself that the Druids stole away but you have it back now, Shiro, you have me back now._

Keith reached out to Shiro, mind to mind. The lions allowed it. Facilitated it, fingertips ghosting over fingertips within a dream. A dream.

 _A dream in the shape of Keith's mouth_.

Shiro gasped, and the world went spinning past his eyes in streaks of red and blue. 

* * *

_The first memory given to Shiro was one he would never have been able to remember– even if the Druids hadn't taken his brain and blended it to bits with their magic, their 'experimentation'– because it had never been Shiro's to begin with._

_This memory came from a different perspective. This memory came from a different pair of eyes, a different mind. Keith's mind._

_It was the very first time Keith had ever laid eyes upon the man known as Takashi Shirogane. Keith was a cadet, freshly minted. Shirogane, a Pilot Officer, wasn't green in the slightest. Shirogane was older, albeit slightly, and apparently some kind of 'big deal', if the hushed, frantic murmurings and the glowing, starry-eyed gazes of his peers were any indication._

_Keith wasn't a person who impressed easily, however._

_Initially, Keith only took interest in the Pilot Officer's name. The name 'Takashi' captured his attention because it was Japanese, as Japanese a name as 'Kogane' was. It didn't really matter to Keith, though. It shouldn't have. Family meant nothing to him. It was just a word. Four little letters belonging to the bin of 'things that were not his'._

_The fact that Shirogane was Japanese was just–– interesting._

_Maybe he was lying to himself, a little bit. Maybe he wanted to see this awe-inspiring Takashi Shirogane because he hoped he'd see something amazing. Something that would thrill him. Inspire him._

_As all orphans did, Keith had quickly mastered the art of making himself unseen at an early age. The ability to draw attention away from himself– to compress himself down, to make himself small, and slight, and entirely unmemorable– was undeniably an asset to an orphan boy. It was just_ easier _. It was easier to remain hidden in a crowded room. The unextraordinary shadows were a safer place to stand within than the yellow heat-ring cast by the spotlight. He could bear it, the knowledge that he was and forever would be alone, because life was all about survival, the preservation of self._

_Yes, Keith was alone. He thought he wore lonesomeness rather well, drifting along as a ghost among men. A ghost in the room who could watch all while remaining unwatched, himself._

_In order to see this revered Pilot Officer, Keith fought against all his better instincts and elbowed his way through the close-knit, writhing mass of cadets until he'd reached the front. He made a space for himself in the cluster of onlookers, all too aware that he'd had to unfurl himself, to become pushy, and solid, and far too_ present _, just so he might satiate this burning curiosity of his._

_Takashi Shirogane better not disappoint._

_He felt several pairs of stares eat into his shoulders and back like a splash of hot, sticky acid. Keith locked his jaw into an iron grimace and glanced down the corridor, ignoring the looks of annoyance. He refused to be apologetic about his assertive, flung-out elbows– especially when he could be so much_ **more** , _if only he wanted to be. These people knew nothing about him. These people never looked closely enough to realize that Keith was a Molotov cocktail two sparks away from detonation._

_Shirogane walked like a soldier. That was Keith's first impression of the man. Shirogane's back was so straight, it seemed as if the spine that held his tight, muscular body upright had been crafted from a steel rod, line-perfect and unbreakable, rather than bony vertebrae. Just the sight of Shirogane made Keith want to uncurl from his slouch._

_Before he realized what he was doing, Keith sucked in a breath and did just that. He straightened his body._

_Shirogane's thick, heavy-soled boots clipped satisfyingly against the polished tile floor as he walked along, thronged on either side by two other Pilot Officers with whom he was sharing pleasant conversation. Upon hearing the hushed, excited whispering of the first-years, Shirogane looked over and gave them all a cordial nod. It was the slightest dip of his head, but Shirogane's lips curved up at the corners, too, and the combination of these two simple, menial gestures shot through Keith like a bullet straight to the gut. His peers must have experienced a similar reaction because the shy, hesitant murmurs exploded into cries of 'Hey, Shiro, hey!' and 'How's it going, Shiro!' and 'Yo, dude, you're my frickin' hero!'. That particular utterance came from a cargo pilot with short-cropped brown hair. Keith thought his name started with a 'J'. Or was it an 'L'? One or the other. Probably._

_Keith took a sudden half-lurch forward, a jostle from behind knocking him out of group formation. He'd barely moved two steps, but two steps were enough._

_Shirogane's quick eyes caught the movement and Keith found himself paralyzed, face bloodless and body swaying, in the gaze of an apex predator. Shirogane could dissect him in an instant, Keith realized. A man as popular, as well-respected, as Shirogane–– a man like that could dismantle Keith without so much as twitching a finger. All he had to do was smirk, or sneer, and every Garrison cadet would isolate Keith even more than they already did._

'Don't talk to that Kogane kid. He's fucked up.'

_Keith didn't flinch. He didn't dare blink, or breathe. He stared up at Shirogane. Up, and up._

_Keith had never felt so small._

_Their eyes met. Keith did not allow his gaze to skitter away despite the mortification that swelled within his chest like a party balloon gone wild. And then––_

_Shirogane smiled. He smiled a smile that was_ more _. More than it had been before. This smile was a flash of teeth, white as bone. A flash of teeth, as straight and orderly as the impeccable posture held by his body itself._

_Starstruck, with a brain reduced to a puddle of goo, Keith blinked once. Twice. His eyes were huge round stones lodged into his skull, glassy with shell-shock. Before he could manage to so much as suck in a shy, shallow gasp, Shirogane had gone. Walked right along._

_Shirogane had smiled at him for only a few seconds, but Keith still felt as if he were a clock that had been cracked open, all his cogs and gears and other delicate machinations taken apart only to be put back together again. But differently, in a foreign, random order he did not understand._

_He stared at the back of Pilot Officer Takashi Shirogane's head as the three men continued down the corridor. Shirogane's smile lingered upon Keith's face. He could feel it there, as if his flesh had been branded with the glow emitted by those perfect teeth._

_Keith wondered if Shirogane's close-shaved hair would be soft to the touch. Keith wondered why he couldn't shake away such a strange, terrifying thought._

_The phantom grin buzzed against Keith's cheek like insect wings, paper-delicate and dizzily iridescent._

 _A blush filled his face and crept a rose-colored trail all the way down the back of his neck. His skin crawled with flame._

_Suddenly, he felt so embarrassed he could scarcely breathe. Keith fidgeted with his uniform– a uniform that was slightly, just slightly, too big for his frame. Quivering fingers hooked into his starch-stiff collar and tugged, as if that useless action might alleviate his growing sense of suffocation. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. Keith simply felt hotter._

_He needed an outlet for this jittery, frenetic energy. He needed to leave. To suppress this bubbling-over of emotion in solitude, before it became too noticeable._

_Quietly, all at once, Keith drew in his shoulders and worked his magic. He made himself unseen._

——

_He tried quite fiercely to forget that smile. To prevent it from becoming something meaningful when, in reality, it probably hadn't mattered at all. Shirogane seemed like the kind of guy to hand out smiles liberally. To him, a smile was likely just a quick quirk of the lips. Polite. Amicable. Soon to be forgotten and nothing more._

_Shirogane was going places with that bright, handsome face of his. With his talents, and with his charm. Keith only attended the Garrison because it had sounded like a fair deal– fairer than another foster home he would inevitably manage to get himself kicked out of– and trade school certainly beat eking out an existence on the streets. The Garrison meant a roof over his head, three square meals a day, and eventual employment. The Garrison wasn't Keith's dream. It had been a choice when Keith hadn't really had many other options to pick from._

_That smile from Takashi Shirogane had to have meant nothing because_ Keith _was nothing. He was a nobody. Easily forgotten and just as inconsequential. Perhaps Shirogane hadn't even been smiling at Keith, but at one of the other cadets who'd been standing in close proximity._

_Besides. Keith never trusted a face that looked so kind._

_No one could ever truly be that kind_

——

_Shiro had been wrong about Keith's first memory of him– the memory of when they had almost, but not quite, met. He, too, remembered his own version of that moment._

_He remembered passing Keith in the corridor. He remembered taking note of those eyes._ 'Such a unique color', _he'd thought to himself._ 'Dark as lavender.'

_Those eyes had made him smile._

* * *

_In this memory, they were all Paladins, and– for the most part– all friends. They had been this way for some time now._

Shiro recognized this memory. He had a mirrored version to call his own. He knew the exchange that was to come. Knew it would not end well. The bruise it had left upon him still smarted.

_Shiro had begun to take notice of Keith's careful distance. The way he delicately, almost imperceptibly, drew himself away from Shiro. Keith tended to retreat from any close, intimate interactions with Shiro, and_ only _Shiro._

_He had begun to realize that Keith was unknowable. Keith never truly let himself be seen._

_Keith hid in plain sight. Whenever Shiro reached out to him as the head of Voltron, the Red Paladin barred Shiro from probing too deeply into his thoughts._

_Keith, the Unknowable._

_He was a mystery Shiro couldn't quite manage to puzzle together, no matter how dutifully he tried._

'Sucking on a razor blade would hurt less than this.' _Keith thought, watching Shiro approach with a wary stare._ 'A blowtorch. Battery acid. Anything would hurt less than this.'

_Both of their bodies glistened gently, coated in the thin sheen of perspiration that resulted from a grueling workout. He fought to keep his attention upon their leader's face. He fought to keep his gaze from roaming. From tracing the lines of those bulging, salt-slickened muscles that flexed and flickered beneath Shiro's exposed skin._

_He lost the battle._

'Keep calm. Don't let him see you ache.'

_"What were you looking for inside my head?" he asked in a cautious, level voice._

_Shiro placed his GalraTech hand upon Keith's shoulder with a gentle '_ whump _', the sound made when fortified metal falls upon a clothed curve of flesh. The hand squeezed in greeting. Warmly. Familiarly._

_Even through a layer of fabric, Keith still felt the pleasing softness that was the palm of the prosthetic, the underbellies of each finger. Unlike most of the cybernetic limb, these places were covered in a rubbery, flesh-like padding. If Keith hadn't known better, he might have indulged his primal vices for just a moment. Squeezed his eyelids closed, for just a moment. Allowed himself to pretend that they were standing before each other as two men aged a year younger. Two men sent back a year into the past. Before Voltron. Before Kerberos. Before Shiro had been tortured apart, the contents of his head ripped to ribbons––_

'No. Stop it. Stop it.'

_Keith had thought himself stronger than this._

'You can handle this alone. You can carry this weight.'

_Shiro's lips twitched at the edges, wanting so badly to curve upwards into a smile. "Ah. You've noticed."_

_The hand fell away from Keith's shoulder. He tried not to miss its presence. Its weight._

_Keith merely shrugged in response, angling his face away from Shiro's. He fixed his gaze upon something distant, something safe, something_ not Shiro.

_"Where do you go, Keith?" asked Shiro. His tone was hushed, orchid-soft. It was the voice one used when coaxing an easily spooked creature into the curve of an outstretched hand._

_"Where do you go, when you're staring at me and think I don't know?"_

_The question sucker-punched Keith, falling upon him like a fist crunching into ribs. Of all the possible conversations to occur after a training session, he hadn't prepared himself to defend against something so–_ painful.

 _Shiro's face bled kindness the way the sun bleeds warmth into the sky. His expression said it all:_ 'I want to be your friend, if only you'd let me'.

'You promised. You **_promised_**.'

_Shiro sensed the shift in mood– the tension that tightened blued veins within a throat; the nervous, agonized pallor that settled into frown-pinched cheeks– and he shifted tactics patiently, seamlessly, to compensate._

_Shiro was good, so good. Good in a way Keith would never be._

_"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. We don't have to talk about it. Just –– hear me out? If you have a problem, Keith, I trust you to tell me about it. I'm always here to lend a hand. I_ want _to help, but –– you never seem to let me."_

'You're right, Shiro. I do have a problem. My problem is that we are _small_. We are small and finite. We are insignificant, a few mere words on a single page in the book titled Existence. My problem is that our problems don't matter in the slightest when weighed against the fate of the universe. My problem is that I can't ask you to heft my burdens– _our_ burdens, from bygone days– when you have so many of your own woes to deal with in the present.'

'I have so many problems, Shiro.'

 _"We used to talk about everything. You were my best friend. I know my head isn't screwed on quite right anymore, Keith, but I've been trying to remember, I've really been trying, and I want to –– clear the air. Maybe we can start over? Or pick up where we left off. I know it's confusing, and this is all coming out in the worst way, but I just –– miss you."_

_Ah. Here it was. The part where Keith ran from Shiro, vanishing into his own private depths. The part where they both said the wrong things and gouged handfuls of flesh from one another's bones without knowing it, without meaning to._

_"––You're still my right-hand man."_

_Here was Keith, his expression contorting into a kaleidoscope of amorphous emotion. Shock became Hurt. Hurt became Rage. Rage became Sorrow. Sorrow became Shock. Within Keith coiled a snake of bitter feelings, trapped in the endless cycle of eating its own tail._

_Here was Shiro, startling back a few steps, his innocent, vulnerable smile wiped clean from his face in two terrible heartbeats._

_"Don't –– don't say that," snapped Keith, who flinched away from Shiro as if he'd been struck._

_"W –– What? Wait, Keith. Keith. Pease, wait. I'm sorry, I don't understand––"_

'He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember.'

 _"Don't apologize._ **Don't** _. It's not your fault," choked Keith, whose splintering voice managed to still sting somehow, to carry a white-hot bite even as it wavered. Tears made Keith's vision go gauzy. His whole body felt too warm and sweat-sticky, pulsing full of mad, hurt blood. He wanted to cry. He wanted to pummel something with both fists_ because _he wanted to cry. "It's–– It's nothing, just––"_

_Words failed Keith. He had nothing. No bullets to fire, and no salve-sweet apologies._

_"Forgive me, sir," he whispered. Keith gouged the heels of his palms into his eyelids, grinding out the tears as he promptly, abruptly, fled the room._

* * *

_"––Kogane, right?"_

_The deep timbre of another man's voice nearly startled Keith right off that rooftop._

_He wheeled his arms the way a fledgling bird flaps its wings. Once, in question. Then madly, frantically, as the rest of his body seized up, petrified by the realization: 'soon, I will be locked into freefall'. The toes of his shoes peeked over the edge of the building with nothing but emptiness yawning beneath them. An instinctive little yelp burst forth from his throat, taking the rest of his breath with it, as his splayed fingers pawed uselessly at the cold, formless breeze._

_Keith had never realized how high up his midnight hideaway truly was until he found himself staring down at the hard red earth so far below him._

_He'd never thought to look down. That wasn't why he snuck up here most nights; he did far enough looking down in the light of day. Rather, Keith clamored up onto the Garrison's roof so he might stare heavenward, his sight set upon a black blanket pin pricked with stars._

_For a terrifying, mesmerizing tick or two, Keith fell forward into void. The rich oil paint color of late, late night– a violent violet– whistled past him in swathes, like flag fabric furling closed, then snapping open in the wind._

_The bottom of his stomach fell out._

_And then suddenly, jarringly– Keith plummeted no longer. He felt the hand clap down upon his back, a strong and steadfast thing. Felt it grip him, gathering up a fistful of uniform fabric. It yanked Keith away from the edge and righted him, rebalanced him, onto his jelly-like legs._

_"Woah. Steady there, cadet," chuckled Shirogane. Keith did not need to see the man's face to know it was lit from within by an amused sort of smile. One that was buoyant, and jesting, but not at all unkind. One hand joined another upon Keith's uniform, smoothing out the wrinkles that had just been made with a few quick, firm strokes. "I know you've got more talent in your little finger than most of us possess in our entire bodies, but ships are_ still _necessary for flight. If you're vested in living a long life, at least."_

_Wait––_

_Shirogane?_ **The** _Takashi Shirogane?_

_Keith spun around to face his savior. He could feel the thud-thud of his pulse within all things: within his toes, within his teeth, within his tongue. His heart had leapt into his throat when he'd begun to fall. Now, it simply refused to return to its ribcage._

_Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god. Keith couldn't help but feel as if he'd just been handled like a kitten. Picked up by the scruff of his neck and whirled out of danger by mother cat._

_"You're –– making fun of me." His skin prickled with blush. Like a thousand-thousand needlepoints pricking him on the inside, stabbing upwards from just beneath the surface of his flesh. "You're making fun of me when it was_ your _fault. What kind of person sneaks up on someone who's standing on the roof?"_

_"An apologetic person." Shirogane said, folding his thickly muscled arms across an equally powerful chest. "Sorry, that was really careless of me. I didn't mean to frighten you."_

_Keith was immensely grateful for the cool cover of darkness that hid his embarrassing, beet-hued flush. "I wasn't scared," he said, too quickly and too crisply. If he'd been born a quilled creature, Keith would currently be bristling to the teeth, puffed up twice his size._

_Shiro's smile softened, but the laughter in his eyes did not dull or lessen. "So you weren't."_

_"Let's try this again. You're Kogane, right?"_

_This was all so surreal. Here stood top Pilot Officer Takashi Shirogane, as impressive a presence as always– even now, even beneath the lavender veil of nighttime. Here he stood, knowing Keith's name. Speaking to him._

_If the adrenaline from nearly falling off the roof had not still been knifing its way through Keith's bloodstream, he might have thought this all a dream._

_A dream in which he was known. Seen. A dream in which the Galaxy Garrison's golden boy had_ found _him, standing at the edge of his most favorite, most secretive hiding place._

 _"How –– how do you know my name?" asked Keith. He'd been floored. Utterly steamrolled. This was all that he could manage to be, at the moment: a frozen-faced figure– knees quivering, throat croaking– who stood there blinking up at Shirogane through a screen of long, dark lashes._

_"You're the highest-ranking cadet in your class. With scores like yours, you kind of stand out," replied the Pilot Officer._

'No, I don't. I do not stand out. I am an island in the stream and that's the way I like things –– with all others rushing past me, around me, beyond me. I am the unnoticed, the unknowable. I am unseen.'

 _"Yeah, well. Whatever. I'm –– Keith. Keith Kogane. And I don't give a shit about the ranks or scores."_

_"Call me Shiro," he said, extending a hand out to Keith, "and I know."_

_Keith hesitated. Then he shook Shirogane's–_ Shiro's _– hand._

_Takashi 'Shiro' Shirogane. Keith filed that tidbit of information away into his mental Rolodex of 'Things I Want to Remember'._

_"Stargazing?" Shiro suggested, when the silence that stretched between them had begun to pinch uncomfortably. Keith realized that he was still mechanically– idiotically– shaking the man's hand, both of his palms gone numb from wrist to fingertip. He retreated as quickly as possible, shoving a clenched fist beneath each armpit. He hugged himself tightly. Tilted his head away._

_His cheeks and palms burned. It wasn't okay, the way Shiro could ignite him like a match._

_"Yes." Keith distanced himself, putting his back to Shiro. He returned to the rooftop's edge and after a second of contemplation, he sat. Allowed his knees to drop off into the nothingness. Let the wind push and pull at his dangling feet. The desert was a frigid place at night. All of the scorch and burn just sort of leeched away. What was left behind was wind, brisk and whipping. It blew even more coldly up here than on the ground; here, where all things are higher and brighter, and there's no sand to radiate up any warmth from the earth._

_And the stars, of course. What was left in the desert at midnight were the stars._

_Shiro followed. There were no heavy, thunderous boots to give him away tonight. Without them, the Pilot Officer moved with all the limber, soundless grace of a cat. Keith sensed him rather than saw him. Shiro stood at his side, gazing out into the desert exactly as he did. Looking up, eyes skimming over the jagged cliffs and hard-lined plateaus to settle upon the endless expanse of sky above._

_Without invitation, Shiro did not sit. He did not intrude further into Keith's tightly-held isolation. It was–– tolerable. Distracting, but tolerable._

_Shiro stood at his side with both arms crossed. Keith swallowed hard. He caught a few strands of his dark, unruly hair and shoved them back behind his ears._

_"It's okay. You can sit down, if you'd like. It's not like I own this spot."_

_'_ Not anymore _', he wanted to say. But he did not say anything._

_And Shiro sat._

_The stars looked most beautiful in the thick of the desert. There was no light pollution here– especially when the Garrison finally went dark, snapping out its harsh glow from within and without._

_In the desert, the stars sprawled on and on. Winking. Infinite. Bright, and white, and too minute, too damned slippery, to ever pinch beneath your fingernails. Like a handful of salt scattered across navy-blue cloth._

_An unpleasant thought occurred to Keith. It stirred his guts with a fork._

_"You're here to turn me in, aren't you?" he said. Calmly. Matter-of-factly. The accusation in his tone was a blunted blade. Mostly harmless, but still cutting._

_Shiro scoffed. This caught Keith enough to surprise him–– to make him look._

_"I'm not a Boy Scout, Keith. I'm an_ Eagle _Scout, the most powerful and advanced form of Boy Scout."_

 _Despite himself, Keith laughed. It just bubbled right out of him._

_Who would have guessed that the golden boy could joke, especially about himself?_

_"Really, though –– I didn't come out here to police you. I understand, actually. Some rules are made to be broken."_

_"Especially for a view like this."_

* * *

_Shiro found him out on the roof again. Again, and again, and again. They never talked much until one day, when they did._

_Keith drew his legs in close, pressing them into his chest. He wrapped his arms around them. Let his chin rest upon his knees, all folded up into himself like an intricate piece of human origami._

_Shiro continued to point out constellation after constellation, as he always liked to do. Connecting star to star with his fingertips. Tracing the sky itself._

_Keith nodded, pretending to see warriors, and princesses, and great bears, and little bears, out of what truly looked like formless light. But it was okay, to indulge Shiro in this manner. Keith enjoyed the constellations, even if he failed to see them himself. He ate up the lore hungrily, ingesting all those star stories into his being._

_Most of all, he simply liked to hear Shiro_ talk _. He explained everything patiently, with boyish enthusiasm. It made Shiro younger, somehow. Reminded Keith that Shiro was only a year-and-then-some older than him– not eons._

_Orion. Cassiopeia. Ursa major, Ursa minor._

_"Hey, Shiro. Can I ask you something?"_

_"Always."_

_"Why did you come up here, that night? Before you, it was just –– me. No one else ever came around. Were you –– looking for me?"_

_The unspoken confession, '_ no one else has ever done that for me before _', hung within Keith's chest like something dreadful, something dead. He was entering dangerous territory, he knew it, and still Keith went out upon that shaky, uncertain ground. He was granting Shiro the opportunity to skin him alive, if Shiro wished it. If Shiro were only to press firmly, fastly enough into his soft, vulnerable underbelly._

_"I can leave, Keith, if you need some time to be alone."_

_"No! I –– I mean, no, it's alright, that wasn't what I meant. I like it, having you here." Ah. He could not escape it: the all-too familiar sensation of hot, hot blood filling the apples of his cheeks. He flushed and flustered. "I just –– y'know. Was –– was wondering, is all._ "

_Shiro could have scrutinized Keith's bizarre reaction, sticking him through with a pin like a butterfly behind glass. Shiro could have, but he did not._

_"I used to hang out here myself, believe it or not. I found the way after failing my first simulated flight."_

_"Oh."_

_"When I noticed you sneaking out of the dining hall fifteen minutes early, I couldn't help but get a little curious."_

_"Huh."_

_"Yep."_

_"––Wait, you failed your first flight simulation?"_

_That roused a chuckle out of Shiro. "Unfortunately, yes. Are you really that surprised?"_

_Silence, then. The kind of silence that felt sunshine-warm, despite the high altitude; despite the little white clouds their exhalations left hanging, suspended like wisps of smoke, in the clear, lucid air._

_Shiro squeezed Keith's shoulder affectionately, casually. Keith surprised even himself by turning to look at his ranking officer with a smile._

_Silence, then, until there wasn't._

_"Can I ask_ you _something, Keith?"_

_"Okay," he breathed back, a tiny bit terrified of where this conversation might tread._

_But it was only fair. A question for a question._

_"Did you come up here to stargaze, or to hide yourself away?"_

_One beat. Two beats. Shiro touched him again, applying the most gentle amount of pressure. Keith swallowed, his mouth cold and dry._

_"To stargaze. I never hide. I don't. Not really," he exhaled shakily. Another plume of condensation flickered skyward. "I don't have to hide because people just –– don't see me. Or they pretend_ not _to see, at least."_

_"I'm not the kind of guy people like to look at. That's_ **you,** _Shiro."_

_"––Flattery will get you nowhere."_

_"Oh, shut up," he groaned, swatting at the other man with an insincere palm. His frown cracked into a crooked little grin, though. It betrayed his true feelings. "C'mon, I was trying to be serious –– unlike_ some _people around here. You know it's true."_

_"Actually, I disagree," said Shiro. "I think people see you all the time. The way_ **I** _see you."_

_"In fact, I think_ everyone _will be seeing you very, very soon."_

* * *

_The first time Keith saw Shiro slouch, it broke the initial illusion he'd held about the man._

_Shiro wasn't something perfect. Something meant to be immortalized in globs of rich oil paint and hung upon a wall for five hundred years. He was not an idol to be worshipped, nor was he a masterpiece. A statue of David, meant to be admired from afar and never touched. Never disturbed._

_Perhaps he_ was _as handsome as the statues of old, and that didn't seem fair at all. No iron jawline should ever be as flawlessly sculpted as Shiro's was. Such thickly-muscled arms and an equally rock-hard body should never be allowed to coexist, to form one being– the being that was Shiro, who had a penchant for exercising shirtless in the glaringly hot sun._

_But he was merely human, at the end of the day._

_His skin felt warm to the touch, alive with pumping blood. He ate and breathed. He slept, although never quite enough, as it turned out. When fingers curled around one of his sturdy, muscular wrists, pressing against the pale blue veins that lived there, one would feel a perfectly average pulse._

_He laughed and he bled. He made mistakes some days and, on others, he triumphed. He would joke around as easily as he could flip a sparring partner over his shoulder, pinning them to the mat with a hand upon the windpipe. Sometimes, albeit rarely, Shiro would even curse, exhibiting a rather impressive repertoire of expletives in the process._

_He was human. He, too, could slouch._

_"Sit up straight, that's hell for your posture," noted Keith. He gave the nape of Shiro's neck a few gentle taps._

_Shiro straightened, but the grin he flashed back at Keith was wide and wolfish._

_"Ah. My little padawan, already schooling his master. You'll be a Jedi before we even know it."_

_Keith jutted an elbow into Shiro's side, a motion that was all play with no real force behind it. "Don't be such a dick,_ Obi-Wan _." He scoffed. "And you're welcome, by the way."_

_"Wait –– same goes for you," said Shiro, who placed his palm flat upon the small of Keith's slightly slouching back. A pleasant shiver trickled down the length of his spine. Poorly hiding a smirk, he, too, realigned his posture._

_Keith swept a few curling spikes of black hair back behind his ears. Shiro still hadn't removed his hand, and for reasons he would never want to admit, Keith didn't mind the touch, not even as it lingered._

_He didn't dare call Shiro a friend. Not yet._

_But if this truly was what friendship felt like, then Keith absolutely hated himself for not seeking out the feeling sooner._

* * *

_Gradually, painlessly, like a lobster boiling in a lidded pot, Keith allowed himself to adore Shiro._

_For the most part, people seemed largely unsurprised. It felt like the workings of Fate herself, for the top student of one class to fall into step with the top of another._

_Perhaps some murmuring did occur throughout the masses, although neither of them cared to listen._

_Keith, the loner. Keith, whom no one knew much about._

_Except for the rumors, of course._

'What's Shiro thinking? Doesn't he know that Kogane kid is fucked up?'

* * *

_All eyes were on him._

_"Holy_ crow _."_

_"He broke Shirogane's record!"_

_"Not only that, but the Kobayashi Maru –– he beat the_ **Kobayashi Maru**." 

_"But it's_ unbeatable _."_

 _"Isn't he just a first-year?"_

_All eyes were on him, but Keith only cared about two in particular. Two eyes that were dark as midnight and twice as starry; two eyes with irises like quick, keen discs of cool black onyx._

_Keith only cared about the two kind eyes that were gleaming at him with pride. Not shock, or disbelief, but_ pride _. Keith only cared about those eyes and the familiar, honey-sweet smile that always came with them._

_He'd made Shiro proud. He wanted to melt, his flight-legs still gone to gelatin as he cut a path through the gathering crowd. Instinctively, following heart rather than head, his feet floated him over to Shiro._

_The taller man folded him into an embrace that swallowed him whole, that ate him right up, and it was the best thing ever, the best thing in all of the cosmos. Keith nestled his face into the crook of Shiro's shoulder and hid there, held into safe, safe warmth by firm arms and steady hands. He allowed himself to be rocked to and fro, Shiro nearly lifting him off his feet as they spun round and round._

_Faintly, Keith became aware that his classmates– and even some upperclassmen– were applauding him._

'I think people see you all the time. The way _**I**_ do.'

_Keith didn't care about the simulation. He didn't care about the increasing stares or the clapping of hands._

_All that mattered to him was that he'd made Shiro proud. He'd made Shiro proud._

_The memory became a sugar-rimmed blur from that point forward._

—— 

_That night, Shiro took him to the nearest town to celebrate._

_They were screaming through the desert atop a candy-red speeder. Cutting a crimson streak, bright as lipstick, into the still, blurry nightscape that went whistling past their bodies. Their bodies, sleek and streamlined, hooked together by Keith's vice-tight grip around Shiro's trim waist._

_He watched the city lights gradually glow less and less dimly as they hurtled ever closer, his two wide, dawn-purple eyes peeking out at the fast and fleeting world from over the curve of Shiro's broad shoulder._

_The speed leeched into his skull and made itself a home there, wonderfully dizzying, wonderfully weightless. Keith felt as if he were falling, then. Falling, falling, falling. Falling through the emptiness of space. Falling off the Galaxy Garrison's steep roof. He hugged Shiro even more fiercely, allowing his star-clogged head to droop down and fit into the junction where strong shoulder smoothly, seamlessly transitioned to soft throat. Shiro smelled clean. Like soap._

_The helmet upon his head, which Shiro had insisted he wear, prevented Keith from hiding his blush-hot face entirely, but it was enough. It was enough._

_Keith steadied._

—— 

_Shiro took him out for Japanese food. He taught him how to slurp up long, skinny ramen noodles in one continuous motion. He taught him how to use chopsticks, hands fitting over fumbling hands and fingers patiently rearranging fingers. Keith learned quickly. He was beginning to realize that that was something he excelled at–– learning quickly._

_It was messy. It was fun._

_The taste of ginger and soy lingered upon his tongue. And then the burn of wasabi, too: his lips stinging in the shape of a smile. Shiro delicately swiped a tear from Keith's heat-ruddied cheek with the pad of his thumb._

_Keith didn't think he could stand it, if he were forced to go back to being alone again._

_If his binary solar system were to lose its second star._

* * *

"––atus! What's your status!"

Allura. That was her voice.

Her voice, as if heard through a thick, hazy fog. Faint, and far away–– 

Then not.

"Status, Shiro! _Now_!"

An ion beam glanced off the shoulder of the Black Lion. She roared in agony and he roared with her, the length of his arm racked by horrific phantom pain.

It was all too much. It was all too much.

"Keith," he whispered, squeezing shut his hot and hurting eyelids.

  
_The Druid's hideous countenance loomed over him. Leered down into his face with sickly luminescent eyes. Yellow. No pupils. No soul._

_Haggar pressed her teeth to his flesh; her talons, to his skull. It was unbearable, this. This, the state of being torn apart._

_Again, and again, and again._

_Talons and teeth. All of it was real. None of it was real._

_He thrashed uselessly, every inch of his body flexed taut and tight. He was pinioned at the wrists, and ankles, and throat. He arched his back off the tabletop, feet twitching, because it was all he could do. It was all he could do._

_The muzzle ate into his face. It cut a stark, raw line across the center from cheekbone to cheekbone, right over and into the bridge of his nose. He fought it, grasping the hurt and holding onto it. He made the hurt into something of his own._

_He whipped his head against the table, bang, bang, bang, trying to physically pummel the witch from his mind._

_Bang, bang, bang. A new breed of pain unfurled within him, opening like a flower._

_'You're thinking of him again, 117-9875.'_

_'Hmph. Pitiful. Your species is so disgustingly pitiful. So––predictable. Sentiment softens you even more than you already are.'_

_'Did you love him?'_

_'Ah. You did. How adorable.'_

_He can no longer differentiate her thoughts from his own._

_A shriek ripped itself out of him, blowing apart his chest. Shredding his throat. It was a scream of terror, and pain, and tortured, pulsating, mad-dog rage. The muzzle swallowed all of the sound, gulping it down whole._

_He moved to hurt himself more, to beat his head right off his shoulders––_

_"Stop that," chided Haggar. Icily, and aloud. Aloud, for once. Her hand smothered Shiro's face until he was brought to the bright and shiny edge of conscious where, choking upon the chill blue that was the Druid's palm, he unwillingly stilled._

_'The crowd always loves a handsome face. As do I, admittedly. I won't have you destroy what little value you do possess, pawn.'_

_So this was what it meant to live within a waking nightmare. Yellow eyes flipped him inside out. Rearranged him. Gutted him. Purged his mind with bleach._

_Yellow eyes stitched him closed again, his brain and belly full of strange new alien parts._

_The Druid stroked his forehead, brushing away the strands of whitening hair that had stuck there, plastered in cold sweat. She rubbed at the line where hard, unforgiving muzzle nipped into face; her fingers poking, prodding, examining, as if genuinely concerned._

_'Oh well. The scar will add charm, I suppose.'_

_Shiro shuddered. He felt as if parasites had burrowed into his very meat, his very marrow, and were festering there, like infection._

_Perhaps they had. Perhaps they had.  
Reality was no longer a certain, definable thing._

_'You cannot be allowed to remember this boy. Do you understand why?'_

_'Do you understand? Do you know why I am doing this to you, 117-9875?'_

_'Because you cannot be allowed to hope.'_

_'But do not fret, my pawn.'_

_'You will not need hope where you are going.'_

_He fell unconscious to a dream._

_A dissolving dream, slipping away from him like sand poured through cupped fingers. Inevitable. Unstoppable. The more tightly he tried to hold onto it, the dream dissipated all that much faster._

_'Please, don't.'  
'Please –– Please –– Please don't take him from me––'_

_A dream. A dream in the shape of Keith's mouth._

Shiro's eyelids shot back open. The iron taste of blood mingled with saline tears upon his dry and swollen tongue.

The Yellow Lion and the Blue Lion sandwiched the Black Lion between their bodies, putting a jarring halt to Shiro's nauseating death spiral.

"Hunk, Lance –– You need to protect Shiro, I –– I can feel him –– he's having a panic attack," said Keith, his distress audible.

 _Keith_.

Keith, who hurtled toward Zarkon's enormous cruiser with the intent to kamikaze.

Shiro watched the unfolding scene through his display. Paralyzed, near-blinded by tears and the sticky, coagulating crimson that coated his brow, he _watched_. Watched the lone Red Lion weave expertly through the Galran fleet that stretched before them. Watched as Keith melted entire enemy ships with his lion's heat cannon when boxed into seemingly inescapable positions. No matter what, the Red Lion kept moving.

That's what it was all about, in the end.

Keep moving.  
Even if he unraveled at the seams––  
Keep moving.

"N –– No. _No_. Everyone, listen up. Lance, Hunk–– provide Keith with some covering fire! Pidge, hold that line; don't let any ships close on us!"

Shiro's rioting body broke out in a frigid sweat. He felt the intense desire to vomit. To empty his twisting, aching, rampaging guts. He wanted to curl himself in half– to cradle his head in both hands as all of his mind's matter split into stardust.

He did none of these things.

It was his job, as leader, to just––  
Just keep moving.

"But, _Shiro_ ––"

"That's an **order** , damn it! Allura, do you read me?"

"Yes, Shiro, loud and clear! By the _goddess_ , I was so terribly worried about you –– first Voltron's untimely disassembly, then –– bloody _quiznak_ , how in the world are we going to get you all out––"

"We aren't, Allura. Open the wormhole."

"W –– What? Shiro, we –– we can't possibly –– ! My sensors tell me that Keith's still –– oh my goddess, please don't tell me that Keith's still in the thick of the fleet––"

"Open the wormhole, Allura," choked Shiro, as hot, fat, anguished tears cut tracks down his cheeks. " _ **Now**_."

——

The dam within him had broken. There was no stopping it now. No putting back together a glass of water once it has shattered into fluid and sharp, brightly glittering bits.

He couldn't stop. He couldn't stop.

Shiro couldn't stop remembering.

* * *

_The gymnasium had been theirs, and only theirs, for a few intense, fruitful hours. Every fibre of Keith's being ached in a pleasant way; his body, all his muscles and joints, moved loosely and lithely, like a well-lubricated machine. He breathed hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and Shiro panted, too; he swept the sweaty flourish of jet black hair off his forehead, where perspiration visibly beaded upon his brow, using his fingers to comb his bangs back into his undercut._

_All this time, they'd been sparring together._

_All this time, Shiro had engaged Keith with all his strength. With all his expertise, and all his finesse. Over, and over, and over again, in near-constant repetition. Shiro had been practically wailing on him, but in return, Keith did exactly the same. He withheld nothing. He pulled no punches._

_All this time, they'd been taking turns throwing each other down into the mats, pinning whomever had fallen there into various positions. Shiro taught him, mainly. But Keith had some surprises stowed up his sleeves for Shiro, too. What he lacked in classical training, he made up for with an innate talent for violence. These were the brutal, merciless battle movements of a boy who'd survived eighteen years in the ring of reality; Shiro knew this, and learned from Keith just as Keith learned from him._

_Keith was smaller, lighter, and faster. His slighter frame possessed less raw power but was twice as nimble, lightning-quick on his feet. Shiro had already begun to compensate for this weakness; he drew Keith in, tricked him into the steel trap of his hands, and once Keith found himself captured, he rarely could twist free again. For the past half hour, it was nearly only he who found himself kissing the mats, Keith's arms and legs pinned behind his body by Shiro's commanding weight._

_This was what Keith loved so dearly about him. To Shiro– especially here, out on the training floor– Keith was nothing special._

_Keith was not an orphan. He was not something to be pitied. To be looked upon with sympathetic, apologetic eyes– looked upon, and pitied, but rarely, if ever, approached._

_Nor was he the top fighter pilot in his class, equal parts hated and admired for finding– and exploiting– a flaw in the infamous Kobayashi Maru test. A flaw that had made the unwinnable winnable._

_Nor was he a handful of ugly, thorny rumors. Keith was not a juvenile delinquent; not the heady, hushed whispering of the words:_ 'You shouldn't talk to that Kogane kid. Don't you know he's fucked up?' _. He was not a handmade grenade. He was not Napalm poured into a brittle glass bottle._

 _He was not even Shiro's best friend, when standing out on the polished linoleum of the training floor.  
In here, Keith simply was _ Keith _. Shiro treated him accordingly._

_"We should take a break. Your hands," said Shiro, who indicated them with a pointed nod. He relaxed out of his stance and dragged his fingers back through his dark, perspiration-slick hair._

_"No. I want to keep going. I can keep going, sir," he protested, shaking out his fists. If Shiro had not pointed it out, then he'd have never noticed how they smarted, his chapped knuckles splitting apart. Raw, red sores peeked up at him through the cracking flesh._

_"First, your hands."_

_He, too, relaxed his body, although reluctantly, and with a scowl darkening his expression. Keith used the back of a hand to swipe sweat from his cheeks and upper lip, studying Shiro indirectly from the corner of his eye as the other man approached. Step by step, Shiro cut the distance between their bodies shorter and shorter––_

_Then Shiro was right there, extending a hand to him palm-up. Keith knew what he was supposed to do: place both of his brutalized knuckles into that grasp. He was supposed to allow himself to be cared for._

 _And he did so, slowly holding out both hands. His fingers trembled slightly, pink and stinging. Shiro took them into his own. Rubbed them, chasing the numbness from Keith's abused digits with massaging palms and the pads of thumbs._

_"You should invest in a pair of gloves," Shiro instructed, producing a wad of ACE bandages from his pocket, "to support your wrists and protect your knuckles. Especially when you spar the way you do. It'll give them some much-needed cushioning." Promptly, he began wrapping Keith's outstretched appendages._

_"You sure beat the absolute hell out of yourself," mused Shiro, whose brow furrowed in disapproval._

_He stared downward, watching Shiro's clean, neat handiwork take shape. Keith had nothing to say in his own defense. Not when his battered body provided all the evidence Shiro could ever need. It wore garnet scabs, varying in age, size, and severity; it was splotched with soft, cloudy blue bruises that purpled around the edges and ached plum-red at their cores. Band-Aids and butterfly closures freckled his arms, fingers, and face._

_Then there were the abused knuckles. Shiro had them enveloped in his own hands, larger and more calloused than Keith's._

_"Great. I've always wanted to look like an eighties cartoon character," smirked Keith, but they both knew that he would take Shiro's advice eventually. Shiro was so good at that. He could always wear Keith down in order to kindly, affectionately, push him back up._

_They were just the same sort of stubborn, he supposed._

_The gymnasium doors flung open with a whip-like crack. The appearance of others disrupted their pleasant, placid solitude. ___

_"Yo, Shiro!" called one of the four intruders, who all wore familiar, generic faces. Keith recognized the group as some of Shiro's friends. Shiro had many, many friends. "And your little shadow, too! How's it goin', Kogane?"_

_Without hesitation, Shiro's visage bloomed with a wide and welcoming smile. He gave each a hearty handshake and slipped smoothly into conversation with the men, conversing about test scores, looming examinations, and the upcoming Kerberos mission._

_The Kerberos mission. Distant, still, but beginning to not be. Keith knew that Shiro had been recommended to pilot the ship. Keith did not know how he felt about that._

_Keith didn't know why he felt so suddenly rotten, either. He just–– stood there. Trying so very hard to not be bothered, to not be hurt._

_Which meant, of course, that he was absolutely bothered and hurt._

_It made zero sense, for Keith to sting the way he did. Just a few months ago, he had felt perfectly at home in the background, in the blur of the crowd. Just a few months ago, he had found comfort in being the ghost in the room, unseen and unnamed. He hated himself, for hurting. He hated himself, for failing to force his stormcloud face into even the most artificial of smiles. He hated himself, for letting Shiro read him like an open book– for letting Shiro tune into his discomfort so easily, so obviously, because now Shiro had turned away from the group as if he were psychic, as if he had truly read Keith's very thoughts._

_"Say hello to Keith, guys. The hotshot himself." Shiro ruffled his damp, unruly hair. Without forewarning, one of his muscular arms draped itself around Keith's shoulders to gently pull him closer, fitting him against Shiro's body. Keith merely blinked in surprise._

_"And he's not my shadow. He's –– more than that. He's my right-hand man. I don't know what I'd do without him."_

_Keith shook hands with the men, stiff and Novocaine-numb. The group peered down at him curiously, fascinated by the notion that such a scrawny, lanky little punk could ever be valuable to Shiro. To Shiro, the hero._

——

_"Well, I'm exhausted. You really put in some great work today, Keith; I'm definitely going to be feeling it tomorrow. We should grab something to eat on our way back. I don't know about you, but I'm starv–– Keith? You coming?"_

_He realized that he had not moved since Shiro's friends had left, his feet rooted to the floor. He clenched his bandaged fists. Unclenched them._

_No one but Shiro had ever stood up for him like that._

_"Right behind you."_

* * *

_"Your hair." Shiro grunted. He squeezed the words out in-between breaths._

_Keith thought Shiro was talking far too easily for a man that had another man draped across the entirety of his back– while doing push-ups, nonetheless. Fuck. Did Keith weigh nothing to him, or something?_

_Frowning at both Shiro's offhand comment and the notion that he was quite scrawny in comparison to his best friend's muscular bulk, Keith wound his arms all that much tighter around Shiro's shoulders and put every ounce of his effort into being– well, dead weight. He fitted his chin into the slick, shiny curve where Shiro's throat slid into taut, undulating shoulder, and hid his sulking pout there, pressed against the other man's hot flesh._

_"What about it?" he murmured, trying to color his words in a casual, uninvested tone. He knew he had failed when he felt Shiro's smirk light up the surrounding atmosphere._

_Even if he could not see Shiro's face, he could most definitely_ feel _that smile as it took shape. Call it intuition. A super power. A sixth sense._

_Before Shiro had the chance to clarify, Keith clamored gracelessly into a sitting position. Shiro groaned softly beneath him; with both palms pressed flat upon his shoulder blades, Keith felt every flicker– every shift, and every clench-unclench– of the solid, stone-hard muscles that formed the plane of Shiro's back. The cadet thought he had to have him now, that Shiro would surely collapse beneath the sudden concentration of his body weight._

_Instead, Shiro merely let out a brusque, throaty chuckle. He took a moment to steady himself, evening out his breathing, then returned to the smooth, rhythmic falling-and-rising, falling-and-rising of his prone figure._

_Keith's eyebrows furrowed. He raised a hand to the nape of his neck, where his dark hair now curled, and absent-mindedly stroked three fingers through his sleek, mischievous locks._

_"It's getting kinda long, I know. Shit –– it looks stupid, doesn't it? Shit."_

_Shiro shifted all of a sudden. Before he had time to escape, or time to process what was even happening, Keith found himself pressed to the mats. Embarrassingly, a soft, surprised little yelp trickled right out of his mouth. Their situation had reversed, in a way; now, Keith lay beneath Shiro._

_Only the nature of the position was a little bit different._

_Shiro had him caged between his arms, a hand placed on either side of Keith's head._

_"No, no. You shouldn't cut it unless it's truly bothering you. I like it this length," said Shiro. He grinned down at him, half-smirking but wholly sincere._

_"I think it suits you."_

_"––Flattery will get you nowhere, sir."_

_It was the belly-aching laughter that finally got to Shiro, his arms giving out on him. He collapsed atop Keith, nearly hiding him entirely beneath his superior width._

_Keith did not mind this._ This _meant being almost crushed by Shiro, their bodies stacked like pancakes upon the floor. His fingers found their way to Shiro's broad shoulders, hooking into the thin, damp shirt that covered them._

_Of their own will, Keith's hands pulled Shiro closer._

_Their training session ended abruptly that day in a heap of laughter and tangled limbs._

——

_Keith's hair grew longer. Then longer still._

_Regardless, he could not bring himself to put scissors to it._

_Not when_ 'It suits you' _rang through him, seductive and sweet, like the pealing of bells._

* * *

_"Where do you go, when you're staring at me and think I don't know?" Shiro inquired._

_Keith did not know where his response came from. He had not even thought himself capable of housing such a soft and lovely thing._

_"Stargazing."_

_For once, Keith did not mind if Shiro saw him blush._

* * *

_There were so many different types of love in the vast, ever-expanding universe._

_Beautiful loves. Frightening loves. Living loves. Dead loves. Purely conceptual loves. Loves with no name. Loves with no one to remember that they had happened, that they had existed. Loves with no one to know that for just a blink, a mere blip in time, existence had been theirs and improbably, magnificently, those loves had_ been _._

_There were loves that needed no touch of the romantic. Best-friend loves. Loves that sung sweetly, purely, like the ache in your belly after laughing so hard you cry._

_There were loves that needed no physical consummation. No plunging into the depths of one other's private, most personal selves. Loves that thrived off of cheeky shared grins; and easy, open talk about nothing, about everything; and the heart-attack moment when your hand fits just so into the hand of another for the very first time._

_Their love was neither of those kinds.  
Their love was both of those kinds._

_He could tell that Shiro was hesitant, that Shiro was worried. He did not want to rush Keith. He didn't want to ruin whatever precious thing it was that they shared._

_And that made Keith feel a little bit terrible because he could not get Shiro inside of him fast enough. He needed it. Needed to erase what little space was left between their bodies. He wanted to feel good for once._

_He wanted to feel wanted._  
_He wanted to drown._  
_He wanted to dream._  
_He wanted to get so very, very lost _.__

'No more secrets between us. Now you know everything. Here I am, come undone. I've even opened myself up for you.'

'Where were you all my life? Wait, shut up, let's talk later, let's live in the now; I don't need a confession, I only need _you_ and I just can't wait anymore, I just can't wait.'

 _Keith wanted._

_Oh, how he_ wanted _._

——

_Constellations, then. Nothing but constellations._

_Shiro kissed him on the forehead. Upon each eyelid, lashes flickering; upon the soft, feathery curve of his cheek. Down, and down, that maddeningly beloved mouth teased– to the sensitive, shivery place where ear blended into jaw._

_Kisses. Kisses, everywhere._

_Kisses upon the bulge that was the Adam's apple, a curious thing that bobbed starkly in the throat as Keith made music for Shiro. A strange sort of music. Music that was gravelly, like silt, and high-pitched, like screaming; music that was carnal, almost pitiful, in its animalistic desperation._

_Kisses upon the prominent knife-blades Keith had for collarbones, pressing up against his taut, creamy skin as if there were something within him that wanted to burst forth, to make itself seen in a violent, vibrant way. As if whatever starving, startling star stuff it was that composed Keith could scarcely be contained within the home of his body._

_Kisses, everywhere. A kiss for each star._

_Shiro connected the dots with his tongue, licking molten stripes over Keith's flesh._

_Orion. Cassiopeia. Ursa major, Ursa minor._

_Constellations.  
Nothing but constellations._

This was not a good memory.

It had been, once. But 'once' was a very different word than 'now'.

To view it meant taking a knife to stitches. To view it meant slipping brute metal beneath the bandage of a still-raw wound, lifting fragile suture after fragile suture with a pop, and a squish, and a shriek.  
To view it meant leaving with the aftertaste of tears, salty and sharp, sparking upon the tongue.

This was not a good memory. It hurt too much. It hurt because it had _not_ hurt, once. Once, it had been beautiful. Once.

Still– _**still**_ , despite all of the misery– this memory wanted to make itself known again. It had happened. It had happened with consequence. It had happened and _mattered_.

This was a muscle memory.

Remembered by the body even as the mind tried, and tried, and tried to forget.

This was something unforgettable.

This was––

_Their bodies coming together with all the force, and feeling, and fever, of a car crash. A head-on collision._

_Keith had a wildfire raging in his soul– always had, always would– and oh, god, how he wanted this, how he wanted to_ burn _._

_It was what stars did best, after all. All star stuff_ **blazes.** __

_He wanted the fire to lick at his navel from the inside, a little white-hot sun settling into the base of his belly. He wanted the scald, the deep, sinful_ ache _, of two crooked fingers stretching him wide, stabbing up curiously, carefully, into a place that had him gasping for breath; had his thighs trembling and twitching; had electric fireworks searing across the black night sky that existed behind closed eyelids._

 _He wanted to walk funny for days._  
_He wanted Shiro to brand him on the inside––  
_ _To feel Shiro's hot, thick length throbbing within him for the entirety of the Kerberos mission._

_A year with Shiro's ghost pulsing at the core of his body._

_If Keith could not have the man himself, then the shape of Shiro carved into his soft pink insides would simply have to suffice._

_"Please," he begged against Shiro's mouth, "please, I need you in me, I need you in me_ **now.** " __

_But Shiro was made of something more patient, more gentle, than he. A third finger joined the second, the first. With his caring, and his resolve to prevent Keith pain, Shiro ended up teasing the man beneath him to the brink of desperate tears._

_"Goddammit, Shiro, **fuck me**!"_

_Shiro grasped a thigh in each hand and hiked Keith's legs up over his shoulders._

_Then, finally, he obeyed._

——

 _In hindsight, Keith wasn't surprised to find himself here._ Here _, underneath Shiro, dragging blunted fingernails down a powerful back he knew so well. A small, pleasured sigh leaked from Keith's lips with every thrust; Shiro ate these moans straight out of the hot, heady air, licking into the mouth that parted for him automatically. Instinctively._

 _In hindsight, Keith realized that this had always been the endgame, even from the very beginning. The beginning of_ them _, out upon that cold, clear, and starry rooftop._

 _No, Keith did not believe in something as foolish as love at first sight. He was no silly schoolgirl._

_In fact, he barely believed in love at all._

_But this was– this was–  
Something right. Something inherent. Something dangerously, breathtakingly perfect._

_Higher Power surely must have had some say in this, for Keith could not see himself deserving Shiro in ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes, without Fate's helping hand to guide them together._

_They just fit._  
_They fit into one another so well._  
_Keith could no longer tell where he ended and Shiro began._

 _Their bodies snapped together like two puzzle pieces with strange, odd edges. Impossibly possible. He felt Shiro's enormous girth as a splitting pressure at the base of his spine, but Keith would not break so easily and he reassured Shiro of this, hissing out "deeper" and "_ fuck _, deeper!" in relentless, breathless litany._

_Over, and over, and over again, they snapped together. Both bed and mattress squeaked and squealed, protesting against the force and the fury of the lovers' love-making._

_Keith had not thought fucking could be beautiful until he was there, in that very moment, watching Shiro's eyes darken above him. Watching Shiro shudder and jerk, dissolving with pleasure, all because of_ him _, Keith. His kisses, and his tongue. His broken voice, sighing 'Shiro' like something sacred, like a goddamned prayer. His tight, welcoming heat, hellbent upon drawing Shiro's cock deeper and deeper. As deep as Keith could possibly bear._

_Hands mapped over previously untouched flesh, making the unknown known. Keith tried to memorize it all, as if this were the last time they would ever come together when it wasn't, it wasn't. Probably, it wasn't._

_Not if Keith had anything to say about the matter, at least._

_"Finish inside me." Keith commanded, squeezing vice-tight around Shiro when the man's pistoning hips began to stutter out of rhythm._

'Here is the door to my heart. Look, I've unlocked it for you. Come inside, Shiro. Don't just wait there out in the front lawn.'

——

_Constellations, then._

_Shiro painted constellations across the expanse of Keith's slick, glistening backside. He had the soft, red rosettes of hickeys to use as star points now, and he did not squander the chance to utilize them, connecting dot to dot with gentle, ghosting fingertips._

_Orion. Cassiopeia. Ursa major, Ursa minor._

_Nothing but constellations, now._

_Shiro held him close, their chests pressed flush together. Space and secrets were two things that no longer existed between their bodies._

_"I think I'm in love with you," whispered Keith, his face hidden in the warmth of Shiro's bare chest._

_"That's good," answered Shiro. He planted a kiss upon the top of Keith's head._

_"Because I think I'm in love with you, too."_

* * *

_"I thought I'd find you out here."_

_He wanted to slap Shiro with something unduly awful._ 'You're right, as always' _, followed up with the caustic_ 'But if you know me so well, then why are you still leaving?' _._

_Not even he could stomach that much cruelty, however. He refused to take Shiro's dreams and turn them against him._

_He would never allow himself to become the ball-and-chain upon Shiro's ankle, weighting him to earth rather than lifting him skyward._

_Instead, Keith let his melancholy crystallize into a jagged, glittering knot at the pit of his chest. He felt concave. He felt increasingly more hollow, as if God, or whomever it was that stomped about in the heavens above with such reckless abandon, were continuously whittling out his organ meat with a tablespoon. The closer and closer launch day crept, the more Keith felt as if he were being gouged away from the inside-out._

_That was to say, with the Kerberos Mission finally kicking off tomorrow, he now felt almost completely empty. Almost completely gone._

_"It's been awhile since we stargazed like we used to," he said in lieu of a direct response. His sentence was crisp and cordial. A little too chilly, like leftover pizza that had been nuked in the microwave, but not long enough for it to taste satisfyingly warm. Razor blades lurked just beneath the surface of those 'conversational' words._

_"Ah. You're still angry with me, aren't you." Shiro did not phrase it like a question, but a statement of fact. He sat down beside Keith, dangling his legs over the edge of the building, too, for once. Keith must've truly seemed pitiful, putting on a subconscious kicked puppy face or something, because it was unusually rare for Shiro to take such childish, thoughtless risks. If both of them tip-toed the void, then who would be there to pull the other back up if one were to fall?_

_Sitting like this, they would simply fall together._

_He slid his arm around Keith's waist, hooking two fingers into a belt loop. After a moment's hesitation, Keith fitted his cheek into the depression of Shiro's shoulder._

_They had already stumbled through this bitter bit of dialogue. Shiro clearly hadn't been convinced that Keith wasn't stewing in silent rage from their first run of the conversation, however, and truth be told, he couldn't really blame Shiro for thinking this way._

_Keith wasn't doing a very good job at showing that he felt otherwise._

_"No," he began, his voice thin with fatigue. No, he was not furious. Not even a little bit._

_He was just_ upset _. For many, many reasons, very little of which he could help or even understand._

_"I'm not mad." Keith's vision glistened, going all watery on him. This was the moment right before a sudden, shaking cry, when liquid coats the surface of the eye and it burns like a bitch, like a wayward eyelash floating upon the pupil. Keith squeezed his stinging lids shut and sighed into Shiro's throat. He shifted closer with all the hungry movements of an attention-starved, all-too eager to please cat as it presses its cheek into its human's outstretched palm._

_"I just –– miss you already."_

_"It's only a year, Keith." Shiro let out a quiet chuckle. The sound of it was dark, and deep, and utterly humorless._

_"A lot can happen in a year," he countered. He should know. Only one year prior, he had been so much_ less _._

_Less of a person. More shadow than man. Only one year prior, Keith had hugged the wall instead of Shiro's wonderful body. He had not known how to hold and handle chopsticks, nor could he have named a single constellation from the stars above. Only one year prior, he had never, not once, been kissed in a way that he had enjoyed. Only one year prior, if someone had told him that he was fated to fall helplessly in love with another, he would have most likely tried to punch in said person's teeth. Year-ago Keith had thought the same about love as he had thought about family and most friendships: it was useless, it was superfluous, and ultimately, it was something he did not need for survival._

_A lot could happen in a year. A lot could **change**._

_"I –– I know," Shiro frowned. "I don't know why I said that. 'It's just a year'. As if a year isn't a damn long time. I just–– I can't stand it, seeing you hurting–– and to know that I caused it,_ am _causing it––"_

_Keith couldn't bear to watch Shiro flounder in such undeserved, self-punitive guilt._

_This was all Keith's fault. When he hadn't been looking, when he'd been steeping in his throat-closing sadness all alone, he'd somehow taken Shiro's dreams and weaponized them anyway._

_God, they were such saps, neither of them capable of seeing the other in pain. Maybe that was what love really was, at the most basic level: the taking of something invulnerable and slapping the word 'nearly' in front of it, giving it weakness, a way to have the arm twisted. Maybe love was the transformation of iron into syrup._

_He interrupted him before Shiro could flagellate himself further._

_"Shiro, stop. Stop. Don't say that; there's nothing to apologize for. Really, you weren't wrong to say yes. I mean it. Piloting the Kerberos mission is a goddamned_ honor _–– it's everything you've been working so hard for."_

_"And you're right, of course. It's only a year. There are a lot of worse things than one measly year."_

_"I just need –– I need to know if ––"_

_"If I'll still love you when I get back," offered Shiro._

_The truth was out in the open, now. Keith squeezed his eyelids shut even more fiercely than before, the threat of tears building behind them like bottled pressure._

_Shiro moved his hands. He put them upon Keith. In Keith's hair, and at the shivering nape of his neck._

_"I'll love you more than ever."_

_"But what if you don't come back?"_

_"I'm coming back."_

_"That's what everyone says, right before they leave me and disappear forever."_

_"I'm_ not _everyone, Keith, and it's going to be alright. I'm going to be alright._ **We're** _going to be alright. I'm coming back to you, safe and sound."_

_One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Keith could feel Shiro's jugular, alive and jumping with blood, beneath the sensitive skin of his lips. He tried his best to drink this moment into his soul. This moment, beneath cold desert starlight, when they were still together but soon would not be._

_"I know this sounds stupid, but I just need you to –– to promise," said Keith, as he nuzzled Shiro's cheek with his own._

_"Promise me that you'll think of me, up there. Promise me that you'll –– you'll look at a moon, or a planet, or something, I don't really care what –– and it'll remind you not to forget about me."_

_"Never thought you could be such a romantic," Shiro teased, in the softest, gentlest way possible._

_"Only for you," Keith quipped back, not missing a beat._

_"Ganymede, then. It'll be Ganymede, as we're passing by Jupiter. I'll see that moon and remember not to forget you."_

_"––But you want to know the truth? I don't think I can hold out that long. I'll be missing you by Mars and aching for you by Jupiter."_

_Keith turned, then. He held out his hand, as if he could seal those silly little dream words into concrete with nothing more than a pinkie-promise. Shiro let out a laugh, but his own expression was tight with oncoming tears, and when he pulled Keith into an embrace instead, he squeezed firmly enough to steal Keith's breath away._

_They sat, reorganized, with Shiro's head in Keith's lap. Keith carded his fingers through Shiro's short floof of dark hair, looking down into his lover's face as his lover looked up, and out, at the cold, clear beauty of the stars above._

_"You know, technically, you still haven't promised me anything. I think you need to say it aloud to make it official."_

_"I promise, Keith. I promise."_

* * *

_Keith's fury burned as brightly, as intensely, as a star– a hot-blue sun._

_Keith's fury died as a star did, too– in violent conflagration._

_Fury made Keith collapse in on himself. Fury made Keith supernova, and the black hole created in the pit of his boiling, withering guts would eat him alive till there was nothing left._

'He's dead. He's dead. He's dead and the world did not shake to pieces. He's dead and the constellations did not fall from the sky. He's dead, and the universe doesn't give a fuck. He's dead, and maybe that's the punchline of all this bullshit: it never did, the universe and no one in it ever gave a fuck.'

'He's dead, and he's not coming back.'

_Keith did not know how to process his grief in a way that did not involve violence._

* * *

_The first (and last) warning Keith received was for getting absolutely shitfaced._

_He knew which boys to approach if one ever had an appetite for contraband that needed satiated– be it booze, cigarettes, or most drugs imaginable, you could trust these punks to smuggle it into the Garrison– and he sought them out the night the Kerberos mission was reported a failure. Keith 'convinced' them into handing over some vodka._

_Maybe he really had frightened them with his reputation and a face like death. Maybe they had actually just known about Shiro, and the Kerberos crash, and that Keith had fallen to his knees in front of everyone that morning, crying inconsolably, when he'd found out about it._

_Either way, the spirits were free of charge, and Keith soon found that total lack of emotion could come packaged in a bottle, in a liquid that was clear and burning. He pounded it down, chasing sip with sip because he did not have the tolerance to chug._

_He passed out on the roof. Somehow, he managed to abstain from falling off and killing himself, but this was only because he already felt dead on the inside, perhaps._

_Dying on the outside, too, felt rather pointless._

_When they eventually found him out there, he vomited onto Professor Montgomery's shoes._

——

_Keith got himself expelled only a few days later for sneaking into the flight simulator and crashing it over, and over, and over again. An endless litany of crashing._

_"What the_ hell _do you think you're doing, cadet? Get your ass out here and explain yourself this instant!" shouted some red-faced Garrison bastard Keith neither knew nor cared about._

 _"Pilot error," he hissed back, standing his ground in the facsimile cockpit._

_"You're talking nonsense, boy. I_ said _, get over here––"_

__" **That** _was an example of pilot error. No less than twelve examples of pilot error, actually," Keith snarled with barely-checked contempt, clenching his hands into fists at his sides, "and I can show you again, if you'd like."_

_"You need to stand down, cadet."_

_"You need to tell us the truth,_ sir _._ "

 _"Go ahead, tell us –– where's the evidence? How do you know that pilot error was involved? Where's the evidence that the ship even crashed_ at all _?"_

_"Son, you need to **stand down**."_

_"How –– How can you assholes do this to him? He was your student! He looked up to you!"_

_Keith was escorted from the room by an entourage of armed guards. Although he squirmed valiantly, muttering vicious obscenities beneath his breath all the while, security refused to relinquish their restraining hands from his arms and elbows._

_On his way down the hall, he got a fist free far enough to smack it into the shoulder of that Lance kid as they dragged him by. It was an accident. It was a wasted opportunity. It was also enough to knock Lance back into the water fountain._

_Keith didn't apologize. It was mean of him._ **He** _was mean. When Shirogane had left, he had taken all the kindness with him._

——

_Everyone thought that he was insane._

'Stay away from the Kogane boy. I heard he barely dodged an assault charge a few years back. Beat up another foster kid pretty badly, or something. What a freak.'

'Well, you were right about him all along. Did you hear what he _did_? He got totally hammered and blew chunks on Montgomery!'

'It gets better. He got freaking _expelled_ , you guys. Takashi's death finally sent him over the edge and he started screaming that the Garrison was covering up some big conspiracy about Kerberos, or something. My friend was walking by the sim room; it's true, she saw the whole thing, and apparently he went pretty ballistic.'

'Can you believe he was top pilot?'

'I don't know. Don't –– don't you feel at least a tiny bit bad for him? He sure loved Shiro. He was always following at his heels, like a lovesick little puppy. Shiro was the only guy I ever saw him hanging out with. Like, _ever_.'

'I heard that they were _more_. As in, an item. Or something.'

'What? No way.'

'No way Shirogane was gay, or––?'

'No, stupid, I'm not that much of an asshole. I just meant there's no way Shiro was banging _Kogane_ , of all people.'

'I heard that Shiro was kinda into that Romelle girl, actually. What do you think?'

'I think that he's _**dead**_. It doesn't even matter anymore.'

_Keith tried to let all of the whispering, all of the scalding, judgmental stares, roll right off his shoulders. He tried to steel himself: to thicken his skin into something spiky, something alloyed with iron._

'Don't let them get to you. Don't let them see you bleed', _he thought to himself, repeating it internally like some sort of mantra._ 'Don't let them get to you. Don't let them see you bleed. Don't let them get to you. Don't let them see you bleed.'

_The corridor felt a thousand miles long. With clenched teeth and fingernails gouging into palms, he continued down the walk of shame that stretched from the principal's office to the exit._

_The exit, highlighted in angry red, that seemed so very, very far away at the opposite end of the corridor._

_He lifted his chin defiantly and fixed an icy gaze upon the exit. He did his best to appear solid, stoic. He did his best to pretend he hadn't been able to fit all that he owned inside of a single backpack._

_Shiro's old friends looked at him with faces full of pity as he walked by. They looked at him like he was something small, and weak, and pathetically fragile. One brusque touch away from breaking. They looked at him like he was a little bit dangerous, too. Like he might bite. Like he'd gone out of his fucking mind with sorrow._

_Okay. Maybe they were right about that last part._

_Keith caught their gazes from the corner of his eyes and they glanced away, uncomfortable. Skittish.  
Keith realized that he hated them. _

_He realized that he might've hated them all along._

_It was true; when Shirogane had left, he had taken all the kindness with him._

* * *

_The desert was as good a place as any to get lost in, so he stayed there, and he did. He got lost._

_He found a dusty, dilapidated old shack. No one lived there until, without really planning to, he did. He lived there._

_Keith could not stargaze without feeling as if he were splitting in two._

_Even_ that _was lost to him. Even outer space, with her all beauty, all her vastness, and all her terrifically terrifying unknown parts, no longer felt like a friend he wanted to get to know._

_It was simple. The universe was no longer mysterious._

* * *

_At the stroke of noon on a hot, clear-blue desert day, the Garrison gave him Shiro's belongings._

_"Shirogane Takashi listed you as next of kin," explained the courier, in the brusque, hurried manner of men who do not really care about the topic on hand at all. "Are you Keith Kogane or not?"_

_In a mere blink, a mere breath, Keith found himself holding all that remained of Shiro's life at the Galaxy Garrison in his stunned and trembling fingertips. Shiro's entire life, packed into a cheap cardboard box._

_His first instinct was to hurl the box across the room with all the strength in his body. As soon as it left his grasp, he gouged the heels of his hands into his eyes and ground in the salty-hot tears that wouldn't stop flowing, that just wouldn't stop._

_Immediately, he hated himself for his cruelty. For his inability to handle anything that wounded him without the flailing of fists._

_He hated himself for throwing that box.  
He hated himself for scattering all that he had left of Shiro across his room as if it didn't matter, as if it didn't deserve the utmost respect._

_Keith righted the box and returned the contents carefully, religiously, his hands fluttering about with all the nervous kinetic energy of birds' wings despite his blurred vision, despite his ugly, hiccuping sobs._

_He held one of the shirts to his face._

_It still smelled like Shiro's detergent.  
Bright. Clean._

_He tucked the shirt beneath his pillow._

_He could not bear to hide it anyplace else._

* * *

Keith was done. He had said all that he'd needed to say. The unknown had been made known. Shiro had some memories back now; he had them back, and Keith's role in the process was complete. What Shiro chose to do with their past together was entirely in his hands from this point forward.

The Red Lion plunged its claws deep into the hide of Zarkon's cruiser, rending the metal back until there was a wide enough opening for mecha and Paladin to squeeze through. They did so, crudely welding the hole behind them with a heat ray––

And landed in the center of the correct room, thankfully. They found themselves within Zarkon's storage bank of quintessence. The luminescent liquid energy limned the walls from ceiling to floor in streaks both golden, from the unrefined capsules, and neon purple, from the refined.

No time to waste. If Zarkon arrived before Keith had time to wreck shop, then he would surely die– and for nothing. The day, and the future of all known and unknown things, would be definitively lost.

He exited the Red Lion. Took a moment to say his goodbyes to the creature, despite the fact that mere ticks were now a perilously precious commodity. Keith raised his hand palm-up to the mighty robotic cat, and the mecha bent its enormous head to receive the gesture, nuzzling its cool nose into the curve of his outstretched fingers.

"Good kitty." He smiled up at the metallic beast that had become as much a partner to him as it had been his weapon. A wave of fresh tears dripped down his cheeks, but still, he smiled. Some tears were not entirely sad. Like these, for example. "You've taken such good care of me. Thank you for that, my friend. But I can take things from here."

Proving its sentience yet again, the Red Lion activated its particle barrier the moment Keith withdrew his touch. It, too, knew what the Red Paladin planned to do, and as if acknowledgment that this was their final farewell, his lion let out one last mournful roar to shake the very heavens.

It was time.

He could do this.

He had a wildfire raging in his soul– always had, always would– and this was what blazes do best, after all: they _burn_.

Keith yanked the nearest crystal urns from their depressions in the wall and began to upturn them, creating a slick of quintessence across the floor that would aid in ignition of the entire room. He hoped so, at least.

And then––

"Keith."

Shiro's voice came sparking through his headset, saying his name.

——

In a parallel universe, things are playing out differently.

In such a universe, Keith is unable to save Shiro. His life, and all of their lives, perhaps, slip through Keith's fingers.

In such a universe, Shiro acts the role of martyr in Keith's stead.

And just barely, Shiro doesn't make it.  
And just barely, Keith loses everything.

In all universes, they were trapped in a cycle of unhappy endings.

They were the sun and moon, chasing each other across endless skies.

That was what it meant to be tragic: a thousand-thousand lifetimes of _almost_ made it, _almost_ remembered, _almost_ in love.

However.

Was Keith truly unhappy?

No.

In this lifetime, at least, he had been Shiro's for a little while.

And that was enough.

* * *

"Keith," Shiro whispered.

"I'm here, sir."

"It was Ganymede," he breathed. His own heart choked him, a pulsating lump of pain at the back of his throat.

"I remember. It was Ganymede."

"I _**remember**_. All of it. Everything."

"O –– Oh," Keith stammered, and neither of them needed a Voltron lion to know that the other sobbed so fiercely they shook.

"I'm _sorry_. I should have told you sooner but I couldn't. I just couldn't. There were never any words. Never any _right_ words. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have shown y––"

"No. Thank you, Keith. Thank you for reminding me not to forget."

"Besides. I promised, didn't I?"

Keith laughed, then. It was the quiet, tearful laugh of a man about to die. A bittersweet lozenge, half parts lemon and half parts cream. It was a sound so courageous, it physically hurt.

"I wish we had more time, but I –– I have to go now. I have to go."

"I know," sighed Shiro, his fingers curling into a helpless fist upon the display.

For once, he knew exactly what to say next.

"I'll be missing you by Mars and aching for you by Jupiter."

Another heartbroken hero's laugh flooded the intercom.

"I think I love you, Shiro."

"I think I love you too, Keith."

"It's been an honor flying with y––"

The hindquarters of the Black Lion slipped into the wormhole, following the Castle of Lions and his team's three remaining members through.

He saw the explosion burst into being, hundreds upon hundreds of quintessence canisters going up in flame. It was vast, and violent, and beautifully, powerfully violet. The same glowing lilac hue of raw, volatile quintessence but on a far grander, most devastating scale.

Shiro allowed his eyelids to flutter closed.

"The honor was all mine," he whispered back.

A second too late.

How very fitting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> credit to star trek for the "kobayashi maru" test.   
>  edit: the lovely [ditaauraart](http://ditaauraart.tumblr.com) blessed us with this _stunningly_ [beautiful fanart](http://ditaauraart.tumblr.com/post/147688676098/ganymede-then-itll-be-ganymede-as-were) inspired by my fic. i'm the happiest author alive at the moment. :') 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > "And I can't eat, can't sleep, can't sit still or fix  
> things and I wake up and I  
> wake up and you're still dead."
>> 
>>       - Richard Siken, " _Straw House, Straw Dog_ "

Keith was dead, and time– true to its cold, unfeeling nature– passed anyway.

Days slid into weeks. Weeks slid into months. Months slid into a year.

A year, and Keith was still dead.

Perhaps this was karma. Perhaps this was all some sort of celestial punishment for leaving Keith alone while he went away on the mission to Kerberos, letting him think that he had died out there in the frigid expanse of space.

If this was punishment, then it had succeeded in making Shiro suffer.

Because Keith truly had died out there in the frigid expanse of space. Unlike Shiro, who had not.

There was not even the slightest chance that Keith would be returned to them.

They had buried what remained of their Red Paladin in a plot of direct sunlight. With green, sweet-smelling grass all around, and a breathtaking, entirely uninhibited view of the stars above when day slipped into night. Shiro left fresh new flowers there whenever the previous bouquet began to crumble into wilted brown dust.

But Keith was still dead,  
and Shiro was not.

Shiro found himself in the cockpit of a spaceship, piloting yet another mission into the great unknown.  
'You don't need to do this', said Everyone. But he did. He really did.

Keith wouldn't have wanted him to be stagnant, paralyzed by his grief. He would have wanted Shiro to make his sacrifice worth something.

And Shiro did not know how to do anything else.  
He only knew how to sit in a spacecraft and _go_. He only knew how to keep his body in furious, fleeting motion.

Besides. Keith had always loved the thrill of flight.

One of his crewmates, Gibson, managed to catch him looking out the window for too long. He must've worn a strange look upon his face, as well, because Gibson's lips twitched into an inquisitive frown.

Gibson. Young and innocent. Just graduated from school, but still quite a capable mechanic nonetheless. He reminded Shiro of Keith, a little bit. Same bone structure. Same thin, swift wrists.

Gibson also had a penchant for looking at Shiro as if he were something wonderful. Something heroic.  
This, too, reminded Shiro of Keith, and this, too, was a core reason behind his inability to grow close to the kid.

"What is it? What's wrong?" asked Gibson, his eager, wide-eyed expression of 'concern' betraying the true curiosity that lay underneath.

And that was okay.

Shiro knew that people still saw him as the Black Paladin.

It only hurt because he wished that they could have seen the Red Paladin, instead.

"Look. Ganymede," said Shiro, indicating the port-side window with a nod of his head as they hurtled past. Gibson dropped whatever tools he'd been sorting through in favor of rushing to the glass to absorb the view.

Shiro's mouth twisted into a bitter smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You sure you're okay, sir?"
> 
> "I'm fine, Gibson. I just remembered something, is all."


End file.
